October 14, 2009, the 30th annual awards ceremony of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund took place at the Asia Society in New York City. Lu Guang (卢广) from People’s Republic of China won the $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his documentary project “Pollution in China.”
Go to the link, but not unless you have a strong stomach.
This, ironically, is the world the Tea Party has in mind for us.
There is a comment of mine in here somewhere but I can’t find it…
Peter – delete my comments in the moderation queue – there is something funny about a link I’d like to post, so I will only refer to it. It’s from Chinahush and is the Nov 11, 2009 interview with the very same Lu Guang…where as if on cue he says:
If China really wants to solve the pollution problem, I personally feel that it does not depend on a few people from Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), nor relying on the public to report. I personally think that it is a matter of law, because in China’s “Environmental Protection Law”, the maximum fine is 500,000 yuan, with no criminal responsibility. For a company with couple tens and hundreds of millions yearly profit, what is 500,000? Go ahead fine me, it’s ok, because the cost of processing sewage is not 500,000, maybe is millions, it’s ok to give you 500,000. Therefore it is useless to only impose a fine. It is necessary to hold criminal responsibility and to develop more strict laws.
As a legal representative, an owner, if strict laws target him, he will certainly care more about his business. There is no need for the EPA and supervision by the public. If companies who were found of dumping illegally or reported by someone of polluting get the prosecution sentencing, no one will dare to do it anymore. Just because our law is weak right now, the fines are no big deals to the companies. They will pay you as much fines as you want.
Presently, China struggles to re engineer Thorium fueled LFTR reactors with a sincere goal of replacing Coal and Uranium fissioning reactors with these safer cheaper rectors. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4971 tells some of this story.china has a Thorium fissioning CANDU reactor up and running, and has pebble bed gas reactors working there too – Google Tsinghua University, China, for this story.